Website Redesign Best Practices For 2018

Sheila Kloefkorn is CEO and president of KEO Marketing, a full-service B2B marketing agency.

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Your website is your always-on digital marketing and salesperson. Research shows that about 60% of the sales process is over before a prospect connects with your sales team. Why? Because prospects are researching online. They want to self-direct their education process. This makes having a well-designed, educational website a must.

Google is expected to release a new mobile-first algorithm update early in 2018, which means your website must be mobile responsive and load fast in order to maintain or get search engine rankings. If you want to succeed in this increasingly competitive environment, refreshing your website is one of the best investments you can make to drive leads and revenue.

Whether you plan to refresh or redo your entire site, these website redesign best practices will help make sure your company’s website redesign project goes smoothly and generates the results you need.

Analyze Your Current Site

An entire website overhaul might be a much larger project than what you need. To know what you need, run a website user testing experience on your site to decide if it warrants a full redesign or if you only need to tweak the design, content or conversion paths. And if the results of testing show that you need a full redesign, use that data as a benchmark against which to test your new design.

An example of an effective user test would be a simple five-second test. You show users your site for 10 seconds and then have them answer these questions about the design:

1. What is the company name?

2. Where would you find pricing information?

3. What is the service or product the site provides?

4. Do you think this site is trustworthy?

The answers will show you if you have strong branding and if your website conveys your unique value proposition and how easy it is to navigate.

Create A New Content Plan

Along with your website redesign, you will want to revisit your content. Survey your customers and gather user data from analytics. Create a plan that tells the story of your company’s current offering and how you help your customers. Then schedule the copywriting milestones to ensure that you have time to review and revise content before turning it over to your developer. Getting everyone on the team on the same page is important. Delaying or missing a deadline can push your website design launch back by days or weeks.

If your plan calls for a content-first website redesign, I recommend finishing the content writing before your visual redesign starts. You want the website redesign to complement your content and display it most efficiently and effectively. This sequence helps the developer know how to lay out the pages in your content management system.

Communicate Early And Often

Establish effective communication between stakeholders, developers and designers as early as possible in your redesign. You can avoid bottlenecks and further work by gathering everyone's expertise and ideas at the beginning.

For example, bring in your designer earlier in the process than you think necessary so they can see your process. Their viewpoint is critical to understand how each step in your plan affects the redesign positively or negatively. Your designer can also help you decide how much of your site can be repurposed.

Building a website that offers the best user experience should be your primary goal. Rely on all involved from the beginning to get the best ideas from a variety of perspectives. More diverse perspectives mean a much better website.

Manage Disruptions

Every project has setbacks, and any project lasting more than a month will uncover unexpected problems. Take into consideration your team's availability and how sickness, vacations and holidays will affect your timeline. Also, technical challenges and business changes will impact your project's deadlines.

Manage these disruptions by tackling issues head-on and finding a way around them. If you have established effective communication with all stakeholders and team members, you can rely on their input to create an alternate plan or eliminate the challenges entirely to stick to your original plan.

Own Your Project

A website redesign is not a side project you can work on in spurts. It should be a priority for everyone involved. As the project owner, when you treat it as a top priority, your team will have fewer issues and a much smoother process.

Consider your website's objective: It is your company's best salesperson. Don't think that first impressions don't count, because visitors are fickle and will click away at the first sign of discord. You want the first impression someone has of your company to be excellent on all accounts.

Owning your project means you are available to your designer and the rest of your team. Follow up on questions they have and stay in touch to make sure everyone is on the same page. You should be able to offer other resources if your team needs help to complete the redesign. It is your responsibility to keep the redesign on plan, on budget and on track for a successful completion.

A successful website redesign can give your marketing a powerful jumpstart for the year if planned and executed correctly. Keep these best practices in mind, keep open communication with everyone involved and make your redesign a priority. Also, keep in mind that new features for your website may need to wait until a future iteration. Websites should be updated continuously to stay abreast of technology and trends. Be flexible enough to accept and roll with the changes.